One Night Of Consequences Collection. Annie West

was, and talk was the last thing he wanted to do with her—especially if she was emotional. But he didn’t wish to turn her away either.

      “Come in,” he said, rising and hoping she wouldn’t hear his heart slamming against his ribs. “What’s on your mind?”

      She slipped inside like a shadow and closed the door, her eyes seeming too large for her face. She swallowed, looked away, then met his gaze again.

      “Something you said last night…” She waved a hand in a classic gesture of nervousness and eased onto the chair, but sat on its edge as if ready to bolt. “I’ve never told anyone before.”

      “A confession, then?”

      “A secret, actually.”

      His gut clenched, but he erased all emotion from his face. This was it. The declaration of guilt he’d dreaded to hear. Their affair would end swiftly and unpleasantly.

      She took a deep breath. Expelled it slowly. His gut clenched again. He was dreading what truth would spill from her lush lips.

      “My mother was a Las Vegas showgirl and my father—” She frowned. Swallowed. Paled. “My father—”

      He took pity on her struggle for a way to tell him. “I’ve seen your birth certificate and I know you are illegitimate.”

      A flush kissed her cheeks, but he couldn’t tell if it was from embarrassment or anger. “Yes, my mother obviously wasn’t sure which was one of her lovers was my father when she gave birth to me.”

      He stared at her, stunned for a heartbeat. In his mind he’d pictured her mother as a quiet Englishwoman, reserved and withdrawn. He’d imagined Kira had run away from the staid life she’d been born into to the glamour Bellamy promised.

      “Your mother sent you to England to be schooled, then?” Away from the lurid nightlife and her liaisons?

      A deeper red tinted her delicate cheekbones, and he knew at that moment that no matter what she told him she’d seen more than a young girl should. “She gave me up when I was quite young. Actually, I barely remember her.”

      “Is she still alive?”

      “I wouldn’t know.”

      “You’ve never tried to find her?”

      “No, and I never will.”

      André wasn’t sure what to make of that admission. Kira was compassionate to a fault. She wouldn’t cut her mother from her life without just cause—that cause being that the woman had obviously placed her lovers before her child. Yet Kira had followed in the woman’s footsteps—unmarried and pregnant.

      But where her mother had obviously been derelict in her duty, André believed Kira would make a fine parent. He trusted she’d cherish her child. His soul knew she’d put her child first, even above him. He trusted her with the care of their baby.

      He shook his head, keeping the last observation to himself. “I take it you were adopted?”

      “No, I was simply a ward.” She looked at him then, the lonely ache of her childhood plain to see, touching his heart as nothing else ever had. “As I said before, I know how you felt, being foisted off on people who cared nothing for you.”

      For a moment he thought she’d expand on her upbringing, but she stopped talking and frowned.

      “Then you understand why I must bring down everything Bellamy built,” he said.

      “No, I don’t understand that at all,” she said.

      She couldn’t mean that. “I don’t believe you haven’t thought of ways to make your mother pay for abandoning you. Or wanted to lash out at the guardian who closeted you away instead of welcoming you into a family.”

      Kira looked away, but not before he caught a flicker of anger in her expressive eyes. “I locked my ghosts away long ago. I knew to dwell on what I couldn’t change would turn me bitter and ultimately destroy me.”

      He sensed there was more, that she was holding something back, something that she was hesitant to divulge. He understood her reluctance, for he suspected she had never allowed herself to be angry at the cloistered life meted out to her. She’d been conditioned to accept her fate.

      “Will it help if you tell me about your ghosts?” he asked. “I assure you I’m not one to fear them.”

      “André,” she said, her face too pale and too drawn.

      André waited for her to go on, but she fell silent.

      Mon Dieu! He longed to rip open the shroud on her past, to make whoever had hurt her pay for their callous disregard. He wanted to hold her and love her and promise her all would be well—that he’d slay her dragons too.

      But he couldn’t bring himself to step over that last fence. For, like her, he wasn’t accustomed to divulging any of his secrets—especially personal ones.

      They had the power to cause heartache. To draw blood.

      Oui, he couldn’t totally trust her. But he could offer an olive branch.

      “I read over your plans for the Chateau and I applaud your foresight,” he said.

      Her expressive eyes went wide, and her smile brightened the room and his heart. “You did?”

      “But of course that’s not what I wish to discuss now. I’d like your opinion concerning a resort I plan to redesign in Cap d’Antibes,” he said, turning his attention to the spreadsheet on the computer. Her radiant expression had burst inside him like the sun cresting the horizon, flooding him with new hopes, new dreams. It made him forget his quest for vengeance.

      “Are you familiar with the area?” he asked, his voice sharper than intended.

      “Only what I’ve read about the French Riviera,” she said.

      He’d take her there. Give her a tour of the old city from a native’s viewpoint. Show her the castle steeped in history and the villas where movie stars and royalty spent their holidays.

      He’d escort her to the casinos that never slept. Then do something he’d never done before—take a lover to the old villa where he’d been born.

      “Please—tell me more.” She shifted in her seat, her eyes still wide with excitement.

      Mon Dieu, to think his business enthused her so! To think her excitement was rubbing off on him—in more ways than one.

      “I recently bought the hotel. It’s a fine property, but the last modernization stripped it of its charm.” He leaned forward, captivated by her interest. “I would like to reinstall its original nineteen-forties style.”

      She sat back, her expression thoughtful. “You want to recapture its heyday?”

      “Oui.” André rocked back in his chair, then tossed his pen on the desk, as if it didn’t matter whether she liked his idea or not. It did matter. He’d seen her credentials and knew she had a head for business.

      “It’s daring. Unique.” She smiled, and his heart nearly stopped beating. “And a cutting-edge business strategy.”

      “I’ll show you the plans—” His mobile phone chirped and he answered it.

      “Bonjour,” said the manager of La Cachette, his high-class resort on St. Barthélemy. “Comment allez-vous?”

      “I am well. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

      “A small matter, really.” The manager explained that there was a continuing problem with an employee—André’s distant cousin.

      “Philippe is not doing his job?” André asked.

      “No, his work is excellent.” There was a long, tense pause. “It is the ladies. He romances them,